


Marginalia

by archived_silverr (silverr)



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: A Blow Upon a Bruise, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 14:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14451726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/archived_silverr
Summary: Grand Magister Rommath discovers some unsettling documents while sifting through the Kirin Tor archives in search of something that might help defeat the Legion. (Revised and reposted.)





	Marginalia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dustygnome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustygnome/gifts).



> Set early in the Legion expansion, just after the Horde were allowed back into Dalaran.

He'd known it would be tedious, but when Khadgar had taken him aside and suggested that sifting through three thousand years of the Kirin Tor archives might be preferable to spending another hour in the council chamber, Rommath had had to agree.

Rommath found Khadgar surprisingly tolerable for a human; not really on his level intellectually, but at least he didn't have the personality of water, as most of the others did. As for his nemesis Modera… she'd managed, ever since he'd arrived in Dalaran, to remind him at least once a day that she was the most senior member of the Six. Still angry at Aethas and himself—and the Legion, he might as well blame them too—for putting him into a situation where he hourly was forced to endure insults and goads and tolerate flatulent preening, Rommath understandably had snapped. "And yet your centuries of experience and wisdom have generated nothing useful!" he had told her, to which she had replied…

What _had_ she said? Odd that he couldn't now recall. No matter; undoubtedly it had been something inconsequential.

They had escorted him down three dark flights of stairs to the Arcane Archive, and prevented him from seeing the runes of unsealing used to open the doors. The squad of guards remained in the hall outside the Archive, as if they thought that such a measure would prevent him from coming and going.

.

After an hour he decided that it had been quite clever of Archimonde to have destroyed only what was useful in the archives, leaving behind only endless boxes of unimaginative treatises and lists of arcane inventory. Boredom would have driven him from the room, but his hatred of Modera fueled his desire to succeed where she and her cronies had failed.

He wished he could recall the particulars of whatever reply she had flung at him earlier.

He turned another page.

Could he have performed a memory spell on himself? Her comment must have been vile, if he had done something so drastic to erase it. 

The blurred memory was a ragged edge. He knew he shouldn't, but his curiosity had been roused: he couldn't stop himself teasing at it until it began to ravel. Yes, that was it, it had been some viciously cruel comment about—

_No._

Rommath's eyes prickled. He shook his head, returned the pile of papers to the box, and then reached for the next.

.

The only document of note he uncovered in the next several hours was a surprisingly erotic love letter among Antonidas' effects. Had Antonidas been the author? the recipient? Or had he filched it from some student's trash, a scrap of titillation for an old man?

This musing occupied Rommath for all of a minute and a half, and then he was back to tedium. He opened the next box and flipped through the documents more quickly. Research on the orc camps, anecdotes concerning blue dragons, a grimy map of Lordaeron…

The map had annotations in Thalassian.

His stomach lurching unpleasantly, Rommath set aside the rest of the stack and, almost fearfully, picked up the parchment and brought it close. _It could be Krasus' handwriting,_ he told himself, _or Aethas',_ but of course it wasn't. He knew Aethas' handwriting, and Krasus had labelled many of the boxes in the archive. Neither of them formed their letters so exquisitely, the consonants firm and angular, the vowels gracefully rounded, a contrast that gave each word a vitality, a rhythm, a musicality. He had known only one person with such a combination of—

Rommath put down the map and put both hands over his mouth, trying to stifle the sound of the grief that roared up out of his memory. He turned away from the table and bent double, furious that pencil marks on paper could do this to him when the sight of that… that headless emaciated grey _thing_ , pierced through with a fel crystal, had not.

Anger shaded into panic. What if someone came upon him while he was so undone? Khadgar, Karlain… _Modera._

The thought of her glee enabled him to compose himself. He set the map aside, wiped his face with the edge of his sleeve, and paged through the remainder of the stack more carefully. When he was done, an annotated list of dwarven words, a proposal for an Arakkoa lexicon, and a half-finished letter to a—sibling? cousin?—had been placed alongside the map. All four items had the same handwriting.  After a moment's consideration, Rommath tucked them carefully into an inner pocket of his robe. It wasn't stealing. None held anything useful for fighting the Legion. They would not be missed.

It occurred to Rommath that Khadgar might have known full well that there was nothing here that would help the Council defeat the Legion. He was momentarily touched by the human's wholly-unexpected act of kindness.

He placed the stack of examined documents carefully back into their box, returned the box to its place on the shelf, then took down the previous box in the sequence.

None of the papers and notebooks and letters were of any interest.

Somewhat crestfallen, he came at last to the item at the bottom of the stack, a worn purple folio. He opened it.

It held evaluations of candidates being recommended for advancement. He himself had been promoted during… this time: perhaps there was an evaluation of him? His heart beginning to pound despite himself, he began to skim through the pages, looking for his name. Most of the judgments were wordy and overly praising of mediocrity. He noted with disdain that both Drenden and Kel'thuzad seemed to have recommended advancement for everyone, regardless of talent or skill.

Typical.

He came at last to a small half-sheet with a few lines of that exquisite handwriting. _This mage,_ it said, _exceeds one's expectations at every turn. I add my voice to the chorus of praise._ His eyes brimming with grateful tears, Rommath could barely read the blurred last line. _We are indeed fortunate to have him amidst our ranks._

But then he blinked, and the words swirled and re-resolved, as sharp as a dagger of ice: _We are indeed fortunate to have her amidst our ranks._

The page fell to dust between his hands like crumpled wings.

_._

_._

_._

_~ The End ~_

_._

_._

_ first post 26 Nov 2015; revised and reposted 27 April 2018. _

 


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